government versus corporation

There is a big difference between voluntarily giving information to a corporation (and voluntarily accepting their terms of use agreement) and being spied on.

I’ve been spied on continuously by private sector firms as I’ve written this column. As I typed on Gmail on Snowden I got ads for new mortgage rates. My search for “secrets” drew ads for Secret deodorant. My behavior has been fed into algorithms and sold to advertisers. At least the NSA isn’t getting rich tracking my every move.

Matt, it’s not spying. You’re handing Google that info.

I’m not suggesting that the government is doing anything illegal with the Prism program. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I’m just saying that there is NO VALID ANALOGY between what Google does with your data and what the government does with it.